Postal Work Unfairly Maligned, Study Says

Published: September 1, 2000

WASHINGTON, Aug. 31—
There is far less on-the-job homicide in the Postal Service than at other workplaces, and the term ''going postal'' is unjustified and unfair, according to a commission formed to study aggressive behavior at the post office.

''Going postal is a myth, a bad rap,'' said Joseph A. Califano Jr., the head of the commission and the secretary of health, education and welfare in the Carter administration.

''Postal workers are no more likely to physically assault, sexually harass or verbally abuse their co-workers than employees in the national work force.''

Mr. Califano, the president of the National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse at Columbia University, said the commission found that postal employees were only a third as likely to be victims of homicide at their jobs as other workers.

The term ''going postal'' became common after several violent incidents involving Postal Service employees, most notably when a letter carrier fatally shot 14 co-workers and wounded 6 other employees at a post office in Edmond, Okla., in 1986.

The commission did conclude, however, that there were an inordinate number of grievances and equal-employment complaints filed by postal workers and that these complaints can take years to resolve.

The postmaster general, William J. Henderson, established the commission in 1998 as part of an effort to make employee relations his ''No. 1 priority.'' Mr. Henderson said today that he supported the major findings of the study.

Negotiations are under way with union representatives, Mr. Henderson added, to modernize the grievance system and to reduce friction between management and workers.

Tension between labor and management is high, the study concluded, because of a backlog of more than 100,000 grievances.

In addition, a dual compensation system, in which managers but not labor are rewarded on the basis of performance, adds to resentment among employees.

Among postal workers, 37 percent said they were confident of the fairness and honesty of their managers while in the overall national work force, 60 percent said they had such confidence, the study found.

The commission issued a 249-page report today, a result of two years of study costing nearly $4 million. Mr. Califano said the reputation for violence and hostile working conditions caused ''unnecessary apprehension and fear'' for the 900,000 postal employees who deliver roughly 3 billion pieces of mail a week.

The Postal Service says that it is the nation's second-largest civilian employer, after Wal-Mart Stores.

Postal workers, the study found, are more likely than others in the work force to believe that they will be victims of violence by a co-worker; 17 percent of postal employees reported feeling this way, compared with 3 percent outside the post office.

The study surveyed 12,000 postal workers and 3,000 employees in other jobs around the country. More than 300 interviews were conducted with postal managers and union representatives.

One concern perhaps unique to the post office: fear of dogs. Ten percent of postal employees listed this as the thing they fear most on the job.